Apple iPhone OS compiler policy may lead to antitrust probe

Word on the street is that the FTC and the Department of Justice are …

The US Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission may be considering an investigation into Apple's decision to block iPhone OS apps created by many third-party compilers. According to insiders speaking to the New York Post, the two organizations are "locked in negotiations" over which one will launch the antitrust inquiry, and the decision is mere "days away."

Apple started blocking third-party compilers less than a month ago when it updated the license agreement that came with the latest iPhone OS SDK. Previously, the agreement specified that applications must only use documented APIs; Apple modified it to say that apps must also be originally written in Objective-C, C, C++, or JavaScript and that only this code could link against the documented APIs. This essentially blocked the use of numerous non-Apple compilers, such as Novell's MonoTouch, Unity3D, or Ansca's Corona, not to mention Adobe's cross-platform Flash compiler that was to come with CS5.

Regulators are now reportedly looking into the matter, though (as the Post points out) an inquiry doesn't always translate into a full-blown investigation. When the FTC typically begins an inquiry (as it did recently over Google's attempt to acquire mobile advertising firm AdMob), it usually sends letters to both parties with a list of questions and asks competitors for comment on the impact of the decision. The answers are then reviewed and the FTC decides whether the issue warrants further investigation.

Neither the FTC nor DoJ have confirmed the existence of an inquiry and Apple did not respond to our request for comment by publication time.

There is nothing stopping someone from creating a cross platform C/C++ library that creates for Apple all the same problems which this is supposed to stop. These tools exist because there is a demand for them, people will find a way to use them until Apple either directly forbids them, or makes there own.

Bet Jobs is wishing he would've kept his damn mouth shut instead of airing his angst in public. It's about time Justice took a look at Apple. They've been abusing their position since they locked iTunes and the iPod together.

So much for Steve's rant about Adobe Flash. I guess he has his own closed policies to deal with. Frankly the world is full of patents, closed systems, and just general non open source policies. So what is the big deal. The big deal comes when one accuses the other of it when it fact their just as bad. I actually prefer control over open source in some ways. At least you know who to blame when it goes wrong!

Not sure I understand why the DoJ and FTC would negotiate who gets to start an inquiry? It seems to me that if either or both thought there were grounds under which they had jurisdiction to begin an inquiry they'd just do so, regardless of the other's position on the matter.

I'm really curious to see how the "market" is defined, if this turns into a full-blown antitrust investigation. Apple hardly has a monopoly position in the smart phone (let alone cell phone) market, but in the "App Store Market," if such a thing can be said to exist, Apple has a much, much bigger market share. (I can't find the graph I'm looking for off-hand, but this at least illustrates their dominance in the "smart phone development" market: http://i.zdnet.com/blogs/smartphone0223 ... post-31121)

This whole antitrust argument is moot without first establishing monopoly power. This is a non-story. Apple can do whatever they please with their platform- Android is a powerful competitor, and emerging platforms will be competitive also (Win7, HPalm, etc.)

Do they ever? I think the success rate for this is either extremely low or zero.

bbahner hit it... Antitrust? Way too much of a stretch.

The reasoning Jobs put forth is crap, IMO. Whether or not a developer, using some third-party tools can cleanly implement all current and future features should be left to the developer to decide, not Apple. If a dev uses some tool that can't provide access to a particular feature, that dev has to decide its worth and adjust accordingly. If the feature is a must-have, they will find a way to either get the dev tool provider to add it, or some other way to get it done. If Apple puts out some new feature, and hardly anyone implements it, it won't be because the dev tools are crap, it will be because no one wanted to bother. Forcing how the devs write their code won't change that at all.

This whole antitrust argument is moot without first establishing monopoly power. This is a non-story. Apple can do whatever they please with their platform- Android is a powerful competitor, and emerging platforms will be competitive also (Win7, HPalm, etc.)

Nothing to see here, move along.

How naive of you! I bet Microsoft though the same thing when they tried to force IE down everyones' throats. Remind me again how that worked out for them?

This whole antitrust argument is moot without first establishing monopoly power. This is a non-story. Apple can do whatever they please with their platform- Android is a powerful competitor, and emerging platforms will be competitive also (Win7, HPalm, etc.)

Nothing to see here, move along.

How naive of you! I bet Microsoft though the same thing when they tried to force IE down everyones' throats. Remind me again how that worked out for them?

Reminf us how your point is relevant? Where is the iPad SDK forcing developers to either write appls with their cross-compilers or not at all? They can get free tools from Apple, pay $99 and write all the apps they want - the correct way.

First off, it's apples platform you communists, they can do whatever they want with iPhone/Tunes/Pad/Pod.

Secondly, instead of complaining about how apple doesn't want ADOBE's notoriously bad programming jacking up their devices. Perhaps you should buck up and learn some ObjectiveC newbs. It's not that hard, it's just different.

How is this an antitrust thing at all? Apple doesn't have any monopoly over anything. Smartphones? So they control everything out there in the Smartphone world? So Apple, since they're a monopoly, controls iPhones, Android phones, Blackberrys, WebOS based phones, Windows Mobile phones etc etc?

Of course not. They make THREE devices that use the iPhone OS (iPhone, iPod Touch and the iPad), they make them. They sell them. Certainly they can say what rules the developers who want to make software have to follow, yes? If they say you can't use this this or this, and you as a developer don't want to, then go somewhere else. There's a whole Non-Apple world out there for you to go explore and be set free from! Go...seek ye fortune! But stop with the antitrust bullshit.

Not sure I understand why the DoJ and FTC would negotiate who gets to start an inquiry? It seems to me that if either or both thought there were grounds under which they had jurisdiction to begin an inquiry they'd just do so, regardless of the other's position on the matter.

Smells fishy to me.

They are probably doing this because it is a waste for both to run a full inquiry, from a time and money perspective. I know it sounds crazy, but the government may be trying not to pull double duty!

It will certainly take some time to see how the various legal issues work out. But Apple's history and practices seem more anticompetitive than those of Microsoft or IBM. So far it has not been that much of a problem since they have only monopolized medium sized market segments. But it seems doubtful that the regulators will allow them to use their patents and their relatively arbitrary policies to build a monopoly in the market for devices with multi touch UI's.

Using this logic, they should have investigated the whole Mac OS platform since that is the business model used there as well. The hardware that Apple uses is usually tied to their own software.

Erm...no?

Adobe is free to write CS for any OS. People are writing apps for both Mac OSX and Windows and Linux all over the place. This specific case would be mounted on the basis that they are attempting to disallow exactly this from the iPhone/iPad, meaning if a developer makes an App for these devices, he can *not* port that app to *any* other device or OS.

Apple responsible for 99.4% of mobile app sales. Apple is leveraging this monopoly to drive the market in a direction that is neither good for the competition or the consumers by blocking out tools such as unity3d and monotouch and offer easy cross platform development.

Apple must be punished. What they've doing how is much worse than what MS has ever done.

garyhussey wrote:

First off, it's apples platform you communists, they can do whatever they want with iPhone/Tunes/Pad/Pod.

Secondly, instead of complaining about how apple doesn't want ADOBE's notoriously bad programming jacking up their devices. Perhaps you should buck up and learn some ObjectiveC newbs. It's not that hard, it's just different.

This whole antitrust argument is moot without first establishing monopoly power. This is a non-story. Apple can do whatever they please with their platform- Android is a powerful competitor, and emerging platforms will be competitive also (Win7, HPalm, etc.)

Nothing to see here, move along.

The issue isn't about a smartphone monopoly. It's about Apple dictating only its software can be used to create apps for the iPhone. I give Apple the benefit of the doubt and assume they are interested only in keeping their platform secure from hacking. Nevertheless it seems reasonable to me to investigate this. I'm always suspicious of a manufacturer's motivations behind limiting choices. I wouldn't like it, for example, if Subaru said I had to use only their parts on my car and they would disable it if I used a third-party headlight bulb.

Bet Jobs is wishing he would've kept his damn mouth shut instead of airing his angst in public.

I bet Jobs isn't. His arguments were well thought out and seemed rather calm.

Ardrid wrote:

It's about time Justice took a look at Apple. They've been abusing their position since they locked iTunes and the iPod together.

Using this logic, they should have investigated the whole Mac OS platform since that is the business model used there as well. The hardware that Apple uses is usually tied to their own software.

Using this logic, they should have investigated Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft, TiVo, and more a long time ago... Sorry, the company that makes the entire device/OS/software combo, based on patented IP, DOES VERY WELL have the right to make such restrictions, until such a time as they are a legal monopoly and then continue anticompetitive practices that can be shown to cause actual financial harm at their gain. Making a dev use another free tool in place of one, but yet which does not restrict their ability to make and sell apps in the first place, and doing so through sound judgment and technical reasoning is not anticompetitive even IF apple was a monopoly. This will be over FAST.

I think the idea the Regulators are looking at is if it is fair for a company to use exclusionary tactics they way Apple is in the SDK agreement, or how far those tactics can go before being harmful to the market. This may be a more proactive look at the issue as a whole by Justice/FTC, and Apple happens to be the poster boy due to their vocal nature on their stance.

Will it result it and anti trust case? Doubtful. But it is a topic that is worth some thought and discussion in areas besides ye olde internet forum. Maybe putting a little heat on Apple will change their tune and set the tone for the industry as a whole without more than an informal process.

Apple (or anyone else) can, present time, use the sort of SDK Agreement that is in place. I don't think many people besides Apple really like the impact it has on devs (If what people are saying online is a true idicator and not just a vocal minority).

Bet Jobs is wishing he would've kept his damn mouth shut instead of airing his angst in public.

I bet Jobs isn't. His arguments were well thought out and seemed rather calm.

Ardrid wrote:

It's about time Justice took a look at Apple. They've been abusing their position since they locked iTunes and the iPod together.

Using this logic, they should have investigated the whole Mac OS platform since that is the business model used there as well. The hardware that Apple uses is usually tied to their own software.

Using this logic, they should have investigated Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft, TiVo, and more a long time ago... Sorry, the company that makes the entire device/OS/software combo, based on patented IP, DOES VERY WELL have the right to make such restrictions, until such a time as they are a legal monopoly and then continue anticompetitive practices that can be shown to cause actual financial harm at their gain. Making a dev use another free tool in place of one, but yet which does not restrict their ability to make and sell apps in the first place, and doing so through sound judgment and technical reasoning is not anticompetitive even IF apple was a monopoly. This will be over FAST.

This whole antitrust argument is moot without first establishing monopoly power. This is a non-story. Apple can do whatever they please with their platform- Android is a powerful competitor, and emerging platforms will be competitive also (Win7, HPalm, etc.)

Nothing to see here, move along.

The issue isn't about a smartphone monopoly. It's about Apple dictating only its software can be used to create apps for the iPhone. I give Apple the benefit of the doubt and assume they are interested only in keeping their platform secure from hacking. Nevertheless it seems reasonable to me to investigate this. I'm always suspicious of a manufacturer's motivations behind limiting choices. I wouldn't like it, for example, if Subaru said I had to use only their parts on my car and they would disable it if I used a third-party headlight bulb.

"it's software?" You mean a C compiler? Apple offers one, included free with OS X, but no one said you had to use THEIR compiler, only that you had to use C, Obj-C, or C++, all of which are available from a number of sources.

All their saying is you can't use an INTERMEDIARY compiler to compile against their native APIs. (you still can use such for web based apps, which are not blocked, and for which apple has a small but thriving web app community and continues to support its presence on apple.com.

Bet Jobs is wishing he would've kept his damn mouth shut instead of airing his angst in public.

I bet Jobs isn't. His arguments were well thought out and seemed rather calm.

Ardrid wrote:

It's about time Justice took a look at Apple. They've been abusing their position since they locked iTunes and the iPod together.

Using this logic, they should have investigated the whole Mac OS platform since that is the business model used there as well. The hardware that Apple uses is usually tied to their own software.

Using this logic, they should have investigated Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft, TiVo, and more a long time ago... Sorry, the company that makes the entire device/OS/software combo, based on patented IP, DOES VERY WELL have the right to make such restrictions, until such a time as they are a legal monopoly and then continue anticompetitive practices that can be shown to cause actual financial harm at their gain. Making a dev use another free tool in place of one, but yet which does not restrict their ability to make and sell apps in the first place, and doing so through sound judgment and technical reasoning is not anticompetitive even IF apple was a monopoly. This will be over FAST.

You analogy with consoles doesn't work because MS or Sony don't care what development tools you use to create games and run on their consoles.

Do some checking next time. The PS3 dev kit not only requires custom software (the PS3 compiler, which can only be acquired from Sony), but a dev kit which costs $2,000 (down from 10,250). Micorsoft ALSO has a proprietary compiler, downloaded here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/deta ... laylang=en

Secondly, instead of complaining about how apple doesn't want ADOBE's notoriously bad programming jacking up their devices. Perhaps you should buck up and learn some ObjectiveC newbs. It's not that hard, it's just different.

This is a short-sighted statement, and I disagree for two reasons:

Why should I spend the time to learn a new language when the language I've spent years learning and mastering worked before? I use .NET and it's a lot faster and more efficient for me to use it instead of learning a new language, ObjC.

Secondly, I may be creating an app to enhance my web applications. Therefore, I have libraries and previous code which helps me connect and navigate through my web application. It's not efficient to recreate those in ObjC just because Apple says I have to.

This whole antitrust argument is moot without first establishing monopoly power. This is a non-story. Apple can do whatever they please with their platform- Android is a powerful competitor, and emerging platforms will be competitive also (Win7, HPalm, etc.)

Nothing to see here, move along.

The issue isn't about a smartphone monopoly. It's about Apple dictating only its software can be used to create apps for the iPhone. I give Apple the benefit of the doubt and assume they are interested only in keeping their platform secure from hacking. Nevertheless it seems reasonable to me to investigate this. I'm always suspicious of a manufacturer's motivations behind limiting choices. I wouldn't like it, for example, if Subaru said I had to use only their parts on my car and they would disable it if I used a third-party headlight bulb.

"it's software?" You mean a C compiler? Apple offers one, included free with OS X, but no one said you had to use THEIR compiler, only that you had to use C, Obj-C, or C++, all of which are available from a number of sources.

All their saying is you can't use an INTERMEDIARY compiler to compile against their native APIs. (you still can use such for web based apps, which are not blocked, and for which apple has a small but thriving web app community and continues to support its presence on apple.com.

Most of the popular games in the app store have been written with help of third party compilers. Apple cannot arbitarily allow which apps to allow and which ones not to under the same TC as that would be anti competitive.

The fact is Apple banning intermediary compilers like unity, monotouch, torque etc has nothing to do with quality, but blocking easy cross platform development.http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2010/ ... n-2009.arsWhen you have 99.4% share of mobile apps then this is anti competitive as you are leveraging the monopoly to hard competitors and consumers.

As Harry First, the Charles L. Denison Professor of Law at New York University School of Law told All Things Digital:1) Apple doesn't have anything near a monopoly so they're not restraining trade 2) Apple's actions don't hurt competing platforms or help maintain an Apple monopoly that it doesn't have

He concludes that there's no grounds for legal action. Further he mentions that Jobs' open letter describes Apple's pro-competitive reasons for the 3.3.1 in the iPhone OS 4 SDK as backing non-restraint of trade.

But the conclusions of an NYU Law professor vs the dedicated journalism of the New York Post citing "a person familiar with the matter" (not 2 persons, ie one corroborrating the report... but hey, bloggers, journalism, who cares for standards) will have no real effect on the Anti-Apple muppets who basically twist everything Apple does into something negative nor on the continual articles like this one which attract eye balls to drive advertising. Kerrr ching!

Bet Jobs is wishing he would've kept his damn mouth shut instead of airing his angst in public.

I bet Jobs isn't. His arguments were well thought out and seemed rather calm.

Ardrid wrote:

It's about time Justice took a look at Apple. They've been abusing their position since they locked iTunes and the iPod together.

Using this logic, they should have investigated the whole Mac OS platform since that is the business model used there as well. The hardware that Apple uses is usually tied to their own software.

Using this logic, they should have investigated Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft, TiVo, and more a long time ago... Sorry, the company that makes the entire device/OS/software combo, based on patented IP, DOES VERY WELL have the right to make such restrictions, until such a time as they are a legal monopoly and then continue anticompetitive practices that can be shown to cause actual financial harm at their gain. Making a dev use another free tool in place of one, but yet which does not restrict their ability to make and sell apps in the first place, and doing so through sound judgment and technical reasoning is not anticompetitive even IF apple was a monopoly. This will be over FAST.

You analogy with consoles doesn't work because MS or Sony don't care what development tools you use to create games and run on their consoles.

Do some checking next time. The PS3 dev kit not only requires custom software (the PS3 compiler, which can only be acquired from Sony), but a dev kit which costs $2,000 (down from 10,250). Micorsoft ALSO has a proprietary compiler, downloaded here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/deta ... laylang=en

I'd like to know how using standard programming languages like C, C+ are anti-competetive? The excluded Flash compiler because it sucks, so this makes it anti-competetive? I would think not. That's like saying that all the programs written in C and C+ "just" for windows are anti-competitive. I think Adobe has it's panties in a bunch to tell you the truth.

As Harry First, the Charles L. Denison Professor of Law at New York University School of Law told All Things Digital:1) Apple doesn't have anything near a monopoly so they're not restraining trade 2) Apple's actions don't hurt competing platforms or help maintain an Apple monopoly that it doesn't have

He concludes that there's no grounds for legal action. Further he mentions that Jobs' open letter describes Apple's pro-competitive reasons for the 3.3.1 in the iPhone OS 4 SDK as backing non-restraint of trade.

But the conclusions of an NYU Law professor vs the dedicated journalism of the New York Post citing "a person familiar with the matter" (not 2 persons, ie one corroborrating the report... but hey, bloggers, journalism, who cares for standards) will have no real effect on the Anti-Apple muppets who basically twist everything Apple does into something negative nor on the continual articles like this one which attract eye balls to drive advertising. Kerrr ching!

Bet Jobs is wishing he would've kept his damn mouth shut instead of airing his angst in public.

I bet Jobs isn't. His arguments were well thought out and seemed rather calm.

Ardrid wrote:

It's about time Justice took a look at Apple. They've been abusing their position since they locked iTunes and the iPod together.

Using this logic, they should have investigated the whole Mac OS platform since that is the business model used there as well. The hardware that Apple uses is usually tied to their own software.

Using this logic, they should have investigated Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft, TiVo, and more a long time ago... Sorry, the company that makes the entire device/OS/software combo, based on patented IP, DOES VERY WELL have the right to make such restrictions, until such a time as they are a legal monopoly and then continue anticompetitive practices that can be shown to cause actual financial harm at their gain. Making a dev use another free tool in place of one, but yet which does not restrict their ability to make and sell apps in the first place, and doing so through sound judgment and technical reasoning is not anticompetitive even IF apple was a monopoly. This will be over FAST.

You analogy with consoles doesn't work because MS or Sony don't care what development tools you use to create games and run on their consoles.

Do some checking next time. The PS3 dev kit not only requires custom software (the PS3 compiler, which can only be acquired from Sony), but a dev kit which costs $2,000 (down from 10,250). Micorsoft ALSO has a proprietary compiler, downloaded here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/deta ... laylang=en

LOL! Gotta love people speaking out without knowing anything. Well done.

"How naive of you! I bet Microsoft though the same thing when they tried to force IE down everyones' throats. Remind me again how that worked out for them? ".

Microsoft never tried to block Netscape Navigator. In fact, Netscape Navigator worked better on Windows than on Linux. Nor did Microsoft ever charge anything for IE. Microsoft's history is both being a major force in bringing down prices and also in providing an open environment for a wide variety of hardware devices. Microsoft's strategy of developing technology that exploited standards developed around the internet has also worked quite well for them. What they did certainly do was exploit their dominance in PC operating systems to help drag along their applications. The fact that they could provide IE for free certainly undermined Netscape's competitive position.